‘Following up To Cy & Lee, this sprawling double LP finds DePlume expressing both sides of his artistic character beautifully: (1) an articulate singer and songwriter who invokes the melodious crooning of Donovan as much as Devendra Banhart or Syd Barrett, whose tunes are almost like mini-sermons, full of existential comedy and spiritual enlightenment; and (2) a brilliant composer of simple, soothing, and viscerally nourishing instrumental melodies, with a gift for expanding them into intrepid collective improvisations, led by a delicate and distinguished saxophone tone that conjures the fluttery sweetness of the great Getatchew Mekurya.’

‘Minimalism is usually cool, detached, frictionless and mathematical. The music made by percussionist Bex Burch is not any of these things. What she calls ‘messy minimalism’ shares some characteristics with the music of Steve Reich and John Adams, but this is minimalism that isn’t afraid to break into a sweat and get its hands dirty (quite literally, given that Burch actually builds her own instruments from scratch). She mainly plays a gyil, a marimba-like tuned percussion instrument she learned while studying music in Ghana.
‘Burch’s first solo album lands her in Chicago, enlisting trumpeter Ben LaMar Gay and members of Tortoise. Sometimes, the results sound like an earthier Philip Glass: Dawn Blessings pairs her dreamlike, two-note gyil pattern with violinist Macie Stewart’s beautiful harmonies; Don’t Go Back to Sleep sees Burch’s gyil fractionally out of phase with a synthesiser, then spins into hypnotic but disorientating minimal techno.
‘Other tracks get wilder. There are drum circles, water drums and birdsong; tracks that exploit the acoustics of a California canyon. Pardieu turns a three-note xylophone riff into a compelling funk groove; Fruit Smoothie With Peanut Butter is a wonderfully chaotic drum circle that sounds melodic despite not featuring any tuned instruments. Best of all is You Thought You Were Free?, which layers clattering percussion over the wailing siren of a tornado warning relayed over Chicago until it sounds like a freakish fusion of the Master Musicians of Joujouka and Fela Kuti’ (The Guardian).

Recorded at the tail end of summer 2020, in the garden behind Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, by this collective of artists, musicians, singers, and dancers, including Angel Bat Dawid and Ben LaMar Gay.
“It was about offering a new thought,” says Locks. “It was about resisting the darkness. It was about expressing possibility. It was about asking the question, ‘Since the future has unfolded and taken a new and dangerous shape… what happens NOW?’”

Bassist Dezron Douglas and harpist Brandee Younger doing over Alice and John Coltrane, The Stylistics, The Jackson 5, Pharoah Sanders, Kate Bush, Sting, and The Carpenters.
Douglas has worked with Pharoah Sanders and David Murray, amongst other jazz notables; Younger with Charlie Haden, Stevie Wonder, Lauryn Hill… Both are featured on Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings.
‘It’s an uplifting suite of real, soulful comfort music — a spiritual salve.’

Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, drummer Tcheser Holmes, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and bassist Luke Stewart.
Raw, organic punk-jazz,  trying out electronics and synthesizers for the first time.
‘Irreversible Entanglements’ fearless music takes to task the police, American politics, capitalism, and racism (The Nation).
‘The jazz ensemble evokes our American topography, both physically and psychologically, by capturing what’s in the news and what’s underneath that surface’ (Pitchfork).